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Comment by okmokmz | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely not. It's a major, and valid concern against censorship and is shared by many academics. Here is an article from a professor at Harvard Law

>She insists, however, that the cure of censorship is worse than the disease of hate speech. “Even worse than speech’s potential power to harm individuals and society,” she maintains, “is government’s potential power to do likewise, by enforcing ‘hate speech’ laws. Predictably, this elastic power will be used to silence dissenting ideas, unpopular speakers, and disempowered groups.”

>https://knightcolumbia.org/news/cure-censorship-better-disea...

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Somehow it's always a concern that governments might abuse hate speech laws to "silence dissenting ideas, unpopular speakers, and disempowered groups," but it's never a concern that the purpose of hate speech is to do exactly that.

The difference is that the people (and corporations) only have words, while the government has guns.

I don't know what they're teaching kids in history classes these days, but it isn't history.

> The difference is that the people (and corporations) only have words, while the government has guns.

Well, no. The people have guns too, at least in the US - the extremists certainly do as the recent trend of mass shootings can attest, and the words of extremists are intended to lead to violent action, not simply be debated on internet forums and turned into memes. And the government has speech.

At best you could argue that the defense of absolute free speech is implicitly a defense of extremism and of extremist violence as a necessary lesser evil compared to censorship in any form. A similar argument is sometimes made regarding mass shootings when defending the Second Amendment - that popular gun violence is a price Americans should be willing (even grateful) to pay for the liberty guns theoretically provide. If so, that's an argument I don't necessarily agree with, in either case.

It's both incredible and frightening how many pro-authoritarians there are on this site

They're just young, is all.

That's what I tell myself, anyway.

Also interesting how many people want a "discussion" as long as it falls exactly in line with their opinion and if not they'll downvote all of your comments without actually replying or making any points. Ycombinator is becoming more of a redditesque echo chamber daily

I think, really, everyone on HN is pro-authoritarian, or they would go elsewhere and not submit to downvoting and the karma system in general.

If so, that's an argument I don't necessarily agree with, in either case.

Yep, these ideas were as controversial in the day of Socrates as they were in the day of Voltaire and, for that matter, Barry Goldwater ("Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.")

So: no, to answer gamegod's original question, the argument is not going to "die now." S/he is hardly the first or the last to try to wish it away, but that's not going to happen.

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